Shincheonji Church of Jesus / Lee Man-hee

Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (Shincheonji is Korean for 'New Heaven and New Earth', from Revelation 21:1) was founded in March 1984 in Anyang, South Korea by Lee Man-hee. Lee had previously been a member of Park Tae-Sun's Olive Tree Movement (Cheondogwan) and Yoo Jae-yeol's Tabernacle Temple, two earlier Korean charismatic-Christian movements. After breaking from Tabernacle Temple in the early 1980s, Lee claimed direct revelation as the 'promised pastor' of Revelation, uniquely commissioned to interpret the book's parables and prophecies. The doctrine identifies Lee as the 'one who overcomes' of Revelation 2-3 and the personal recipient of John's revelation.

Shincheonji recruitment is highly distinctive and has been the focus of most academic and journalistic critique. The 'harvest' (chusu) doctrine teaches that 144,000 sealed members (per Revelation 7 and 14) must be gathered before the second coming. Recruitment proceeds through 'harvest workers' who attend established Korean Protestant churches without disclosing their Shincheonji affiliation, befriend members over months, and gradually introduce them to free 'Bible study' programmes that turn out to be the Shincheonji Zion Christian Mission Centre curriculum — a 6-12-month course system culminating in commitment to Lee as the promised pastor. The South Korean Council of Churches has issued formal warnings against this 'mosul' (deceptive infiltration) practice since the 1990s.

The February 2020 Daegu COVID-19 outbreak made Shincheonji globally notorious. 'Patient 31' attended Shincheonji services in Daegu while symptomatic; within weeks thousands of Shincheonji members and contacts tested positive, producing South Korea's first major outbreak. Korean public health authorities reported substantial obstruction: members provided incomplete or false attendance rosters, individual members denied membership when interviewed by contact tracers, and the central organisation initially refused to share full membership lists. Lee Man-hee personally apologised in March 2020 in a televised press conference, kneeling in front of cameras. In August 2020 he was arrested on charges of obstruction of disease-control investigations, embezzlement of organisation funds, and illegal political meetings. He was convicted in 2020 on the obstruction charges (1 year suspended) and acquitted on appeal in 2021 on the embezzlement charges.

Beyond the COVID period, documented coercive-control patterns include: severance from non-Shincheonji family (members instructed to prioritise the 'spiritual family' over biological family); marriage matching within the organisation; financial extraction via tithing plus expected attendance at 'gukin' (national-level) events; total time consumption (multiple weeknight services plus weekend programmes); and rigorous in-group/out-group framing where mainstream Korean Protestant churches are described as 'Babylon' awaiting destruction. Estimated current membership is approximately 300,000 baptised members across South Korea, Japan, China (where the movement is officially banned), the United States, and Europe.

The CLCI 35 (Extreme) reflects the combination of deceptive recruitment, total worldview replacement, documented severance pressure, and the 2020 public-health-investigation obstruction — patterns that place Shincheonji in the top tier of contemporary high-control Christian organisations globally.